If I could change the world…

I often think I have good ideas, but I tend to be a “thinker” and have problems “doing”. It’s not that I can’t “do” it’s usually the familiar feeling of saying “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” quickly followed by “yea, and it would also be nice if I had time for that” which I’m sure we can all sympathize with.

I recently read Accelerando by Charles Stross. It’s not my favorite book of his but I really like his work. In this story one of the main characters embodies sort of the ultimate in opensource philosophy. Rather then just the typical “writing code and giving it away for free” that we’re all familiar with, he shares his ideas for free and lives off the goodwill of those who implement them.

It would be an ideal job description for me, and although I never expect to get compensated for an idea I thought I would try to embody that idealism. I seem to recall a website somewhere in the ether with the same philosophy but can’t recall the URL.

Anyway, in that spirit, here goes;

I think someone should hack greasemonkey and google reader so that “sharing” or “starting” an entry automatically promotes it on digg and reddit. There shouldn’t be an additional step. Or maybe digg and reddit could simply implement feed slurping for your shared list.

I believe the future of the Internet as a whole will be an increasingly seemless interaction between multiple services. User’s don’t want to manage Gmail and Yahoo mail as separate entities (yes I have both). That’s a simple example but ask yourself the question why, given the proper security / policy / profile controls, it’s necessary for you to goto Facebook to receive your Facebook messages.

Hey Kyle,
I’ve never met Sam Adams, and at first I was thinking Boston Brewer, so I’ll take your word on it, but that sounds like the right spirit. Maybe my answer would be “remember me in the credits”!

I really wish I could remember the site but I thought it was something like “if I had the time” (I checked, that’s not it). That seemed to be the spirit of the site, i.e. “Here’s an idea I’m incapable of bringing to fruition…”.

I can’t recall if I’ve seen a site for openly posting ideas, but I certainly could use one myself to share or find interesting project ideas so if you happen to remember, please post the link!

The best example I’ve ever come across of someone freely sharing ideas is Sam Adams. He was a fountain of ideas and usually had so many there was no way he could research or patent them all. His answer was always “keep it!”.